IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecinqu/v58y2020i1p86-103.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Linking Wealth And Punishment Effectiveness: Punishment And Cooperation Under Congruent Heterogeneities

Author

Listed:
  • Israel Waichman

Abstract

Global and local cooperation in supplying global public goods is often insufficient. In this respect, laboratory experiments show that peer punishment is an effective cooperation‐enhancing instrument. However, it is unclear whether peer punishment would facilitate cooperation and public good provision even under congruent heterogeneities in wealth and punishment effectiveness. To this end, we experimentally study the effect of peer punishment under joint heterogeneities, where either the richest or the poorest member is also the most effective punisher. We compare these joint heterogeneities to treatments with single heterogeneities in either endowment or punishment effectiveness and to a baseline symmetry treatment with homogeneous parties. We find that heterogeneity in punishment effectiveness does not matter for cooperation, whereas endowment heterogeneity reduces cooperation compared to symmetry. This is because rich members contribute a lower portion of their endowment to the public good than their poorer counterparts. We also observe that cooperation is higher under joint heterogeneities in endowment and punishment effectiveness than under endowment heterogeneity (with no differences than under symmetry). This holds even when the rich party gains less from cooperation and is the most effective punisher. (JEL C92, D74, H41)

Suggested Citation

  • Israel Waichman, 2020. "Linking Wealth And Punishment Effectiveness: Punishment And Cooperation Under Congruent Heterogeneities," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 58(1), pages 86-103, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecinqu:v:58:y:2020:i:1:p:86-103
    DOI: 10.1111/ecin.12713
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ecin.12713
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ecin.12713?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. De Geest, Lawrence R. & Kingsley, David C., 2021. "Norm enforcement with incomplete information," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 403-430.
    2. Svetlana Pevnitskaya & Dmitry Ryvkin, 2022. "The effect of options to reward and punish on behavior in bargaining," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(1), pages 171-192, February.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ecinqu:v:58:y:2020:i:1:p:86-103. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/weaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.